‘It’s not funny, Friedrich – why on earth are you smiling?’

‘I’m not saying it’s funny, Father, but it’s like I’m famous!’

‘You’ve not learnt your lesson, have you? Continue, Ulrich.’

‘To my surprise, a couple of days later the Englishman arrived at the potato stall on Moselstrasse with all the right codes, and so I went to see him: he still had all the money, so I took it and sent him on his way to Cologne.’

‘Really?’

‘Not quite. I couldn’t allow him to stay alive, not with him having met me and with all those questions… I had a man follow him and made sure he didn’t arrive in Cologne.’

‘Good. I presume it was made to look like a robbery.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Because the last thing we want to do is alienate our friends in England. They may stop being so generous.’

‘But I thought you said they need us as much as we need them?’

‘Well, let’s see. Tell me what happened after that.’

‘Your instructions were that once we had the money we must start out on our journey, so I called the comrade who was going to take us on the next stage. He was going to pick us up outside the house, but when we came out, there were Americans waiting for us: I fear they may have followed me to Königstein. Fortunately we had our revolvers drawn and we were smarter than them. Friedrich hit one of them, and we managed to get back into the house and from there through the cellars into another house. The comrade picked us up outside that one. I don’t suppose you have a drink?’

‘You’ll get one inside – I want to hear what happened first.’

‘The comrade was very good, Wolfgang: he’d picked us up in an American jeep, and after a few miles we pulled into a farm and he left the jeep there. We waited until dawn, when he drove us to Würzburg in another car. He then returned to the jeep and left it in Bad Kissingen to put them off our scent.’

‘Very thorough – as I would expect.’

‘We stayed in Würzburg with the widow of a comrade for a day and then took separate buses to Nuremberg.’

‘From where you called me.’

‘The priest who looked after us in Nuremberg – he kept asking for more money and I felt I had to give it to him. He seemed very nervous, and when I told him he was supposed to arrange our journey on to Salzburg, he said he didn’t realise that. I said of course you did and he asked for even more money, and that’s when I became very concerned: I wasn’t sure I trusted him and I thought the safest thing was to come here. The money’s all in that rucksack – apart from what I had to use.’

Wolfgang took them into the house, where they sat silently in the kitchen as Frau Moser served them a stew, eyeing them suspiciously as she fussed nervously around the table. Friedrich grumbled as they were shown into the cellar, but his father told him to shut up. He’d sort something out, he said, but it would take a few days. They were only to leave the cellar when told to do so.